Evangelism and Market Share

There are plenty of people who've written cogent analyses detailing the ongoing issue of "mainline decline". Theories abound, but theological and sociological theories of various stripes and in various permutations lead the explanation parade. But when all of the theorizing, postulating, extrapolating and hyperventilating is done, the bottom line remains the same. From a strictly business standpoint those of us in the historic Protestant denominations -- Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, etc. -- have lost significant market share. As one person quipped, "The mainline has become the sideline."

The difficulty with all of this denominational handwringing, is that it fails to generate any sort of positive momentum. It's almost as if the "experts" believe that through describing in new and more desperate fashion the grave state of the mainline, the people remaining in our congregations will suddenly snap out of the Sunday morning stupor, get excited about helping "grow the church", muster all their excess energy and get "out there" to find some new members to shore up the sinking denominational ship. The problem with this strategy is the denominational ships have, for too long, functioned as passenger liners -- where the faithful merely have to pay their fare, get on board and cruise comfortably toward the heavenly horizon. We haven't sufficiently communicated to folks that on the Gospel ship there are no passengers only crew members!

What's clear to me is this: no amount of bailing (applying copious amounts of energy and initiative to the same tired strategies) will stem the rising tide of social change all around us. And this is precisely why we need to let go of our fixation with market share. The tempest of change is swirling around us and atempting to control it through more data will not stave off its effects. If we let go of the language of market share, then we might more fully embrace the language of evangelism -- of sharing the Good News.

The Good News isn't that people can come to our churches and help save our traditions (no matter how storied and historically valuable they may be). The Good News is that God has come to humanity through the person of Jesus the Christ. The Good News is that God is more concerned about the salvation of the world -- one person at a time --than the preservation of an institutional status quo. The Good News is that this continuing ministry of Jesus in the world is "incarnated", literally embodied in communities of people, not housed in brick and mortar at denominational "HQ". The Good News is that the invitation to follow Jesus in the company of a community of fellow followers is offered to "whosoever will". The invitation to follow Jesus in the Way that leads to life is not dependent upon one's ability to pay a pledge, serve on a committee, or teach a Sunday School class.

And that Good News -- the Good News of God in Christ--will continue to "sell", even if mainliners go out of business. Because the Good News was never intended to capture passengers on a denominational ship. The Good News is intended to liberate sin's captives and set them free to walk through the storms of life's uncertainties (Matthew 14:22-33)!

Perhaps we've gotten lost in all of our analytics. Perhaps we've been seduced into thinking that a slick ad campaign designed by some Madison Avenue type and strategically directed through a multiplicity of media outlets is the salvation of our sinking market share. I wonder what would happen if we took our eyes off demographics and focused them on Jesus for a while. Simplistic? Maybe.

But, remember what happened to Peter? He got so distracted by a storm he took his eyes off Jesus and the solidity of water beneath his feet turned to, well, water! When he realized what was happening he cried out, Jesus lifted him back to the top of the water and on they walked to the waiting boat. Remember what Jesus said to him? "Oh, you of little faith! Why did you doubt?"

Peter had no good answer. Do we?

Counting

Often, when people discover I'm a pastor (and after they've gotten some idea of what an Episcopalian is!) their next question is usually, "How big is your church?"

I've been tempted to answer "Oh, currently a shade over 2 billion people," since this is the approximate number of Christians worldwide and we're all a part of Christ's Church (whether we recognize each other as such or not). Fortunately, I've long since given up the need to explain that the church belongs to God and not to the pastor and/or the congregation. So, with those two caveats in mind, I usually answer by saying something like, "We have between 140-160 people in attendance at the Sunday liturgies each week." This explanation in numbers seems to be sufficient for most people.

For a long time, average Sunday attendance (ASA) was a sufficient answer for me as well. Much of the literature around congregational development focused on Sunday worship attendance as a barometer of congregational vitality; of how a congregation embodied its mission and ministry. People who study congregations discovered certain trends and commonalities exist amongst churches with this or that number of attendees at worship. All so scientific. All so statistical. All so seemingly "objective". And...all so flawed.

The purpose of all of this counting seemed to be figuring out how to get more people to count. The question I've been wrestling with of late is, "What does it mean for a congregation to 'grow'?" Just numbers? Just an increase in people in the building so the singing sounds better? So we feel better about ourselves? So we can offer more (God forbid!) "programs"? So we can increase our giving to the judicatory? So we can hire more staff? To what end is such growth?

Some would say at this point, "But didn't Jesus command his disciples to, 'Go into the world'? Aren't we supposed to make disciples?" And of course the answer is, "Yes!" What we church-goers sometimes lose sight of, though, is that Jesus doesn't tell his disciples, "Build buildings so you can hide out inside of them, confusing church work with discipleship, and then have to invest all sorts of time, energy and money to maintain them. Oh, and while you're at it, accumulate an ecclesiastical heirarchy of religious professionals who will require salary and benefits."

Let's be clear. Making disciples isn't the same thing as making good, pew-sitting, pledge-paying church members. The fact is, a local congregation may be strong, vibrant and doing a fabulous job of serving the larger community and still be numerically small and economically challenged. A community of faithful disciples may be bearing each other's burdens, visiting the sick, caring for the widows and orphans, studying scripture, "proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ" and still not be able to afford to support a "full time" clergyperson. It may not possess the full compliment of necessary religious goods and services to appeal to the discriminating (and highly individualistic) palates of the sophisticated church shopper. It may not be able to compete with the high-fallootin' Ecclesiastical Superstore across town. But such a fellowship might very well be the future of a healthy conregation -- as offensive as that might be to the American sensibility that "bigger is better".

Am I anti-church growth? By no means! But I am beginning to question growth for growth's own sake. I am having doubts about numerical growth that does not lead to a deepening of relationships between people who are a part of a worshipping community or a broadening of compassion toward those on the margins of society. I am increasingly uncomfortable with the language of marketing being substituted for a theology of evangelism. We are not selling a product, we are preaching the paradoxical Good News that the way to find life is to lose it in the service of Someone who came as a servant to all. The same Someone who gave himself up for all people -- even the ones who betrayed and rejected him.

Two thousand years after the fact, the Jesus movement is more than 2 billion strong. But it started with an unlikely assembly of a few dozen people. And the movement gained ground one person at a time. For all our focus on big numbers, Jesus insisted on working with small ones -- "Where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them," he said. Two or three. Even I can count that high.

Judging Distance

One of the hazards of being a clergy-type is the acquisition of the stance known in "the helping professions" as "clinical distance". For the most part, this skill of keeping one's emotional distance is about maintaining healthy boundaries for the clergyperson and the people with whom he/she interacts. Clinical distance allows clergy to be present for people in distress without becoming emotionally overwhelmed ourselves. After all, we regularly wind up in ICU units, surgical wards, mental health facilities, courtrooms, jails and other such locations because our "job" is to personally bring the faith of the Church to bear on those moments that are unbearable.

But the shimmering, mirage-like line that marks the border between appropriate clinical distance and emotional aloofness is sometimes difficult to discern. On the one hand, I suspect the last thing a person in distress would want to do is "take care" of a supposed caregiver who is unable to cope with a particular situation. On the other hand, the robotic dispensing of pastoral care does little to convey the compassion of the God we claim is present with us, even "in the valley of the shadow of death".

All of this has been brought home to me in the past two and a half weeks as I've prayed for a friend who is dying as a result of complications from a medical procedure gone awry. I've done my fair share of crying for her family who will be left without her gifts of love, laughter and light. I have wept for those who are her closest friends. Each of them will live with the scar of absence death (particularly an untimely one) brings to the lives of those who remain. And yes, I've done my own sobbing about the loss I feel of having a dear friend leave this life in such an unexpected way. Thankfully, this family and these friends have a wonderful priest to attend to them and a close parish community to support them in the days to come. They are not left comfortless -- and that is a comfort.

I don't know how well I've done through the years of judging appropriate clinical distance. Over the last few days, I've come to suspect that I have often erred toward the "aloof" side of the scale. But I have been powerfully reminded of late that my emotions (as raw as they may be right now) are still part and parcel of who I am as a human being and as a priest. Lorraine's parting gift to me was to remind me that the primal religion of the heart -- with all of the emotions attendant to it -- opens us up to living in the questions even when the religion of the head fails to provide any logical answers. For this gift (and the gift of her friendship), I am exceedingly thankful.

Better Speaking through Silence

A few weeks back, those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary took a romp through the New Testament Letter of James. Maligned by Martin Luther as "an epistle of straw" because its contents could not be bent toward a more favorable agreement with his understanding of salvation through grace alone, James is direct, unadorned and at times, pendantic. The epistle has the feel of the Wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures (think Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, for example). Sometimes James is just, well, very preachy!

Here's a nugget from the August 30 reading: "Let everyone be quick to hear and slow to speak..." (James 1:19a)

Hmmm....that's good advice at any time, but these days, with uniformed wordiness being all the rage, this exhortation seems particularly appropriate. As a preacher-type, I too often default to talking, when listening is more in order. If I'm not careful, I assume that people ask questions to hear me pour forth a torrent of words as an "answer". I'm beginning to understand that sometimes the question is offered as an invitation toward deeper listening.

Perhaps in our cultural loquaciousness, we've simply lost the ability to hold a space, to give words a chance to sink in before they are swept away by another flurry of sentences. Holding a space. Waiting just a moment. Savoring a second of silence. Allowing the speaker's ideas to take up space, to spread out, to hang, suspended in the delicious communion of conversation. Maybe even resisting the almost-always-irresistible desire to refute an opinion that is contrary to our own. I've probably got more to say about listening, but maybe now is a good time to practice rather than preach.